Top 7 Buffer Alternatives to Boost Social Media Presence

While Buffer offers great reporting, Brandwatch takes it one step further with its Benchmark product. With this rather unique product, you can compare your brand’s social media performance to competitors and other leaders in your industry. 

Another standout feature is its Influencer product. It’s an end-to-end solution that lets you manage all the key tasks like influencer discovery, communication, and campaign reporting in one place. If you plan on making influencer marketing a big part of your marketing strategy, this feature will very likely tip the scales in Brandwatch’s favor.

Here are some of Brandwatch’s key features:

• Tools that give you in-depth insights into your audience
• A powerful integration with TikTok
• Social listening to track what’s being said online about your brand, its offering, and similar companies 
• A unified inbox to keep track of social engagement

Supported Channels: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and LinkedIn

Pricing: Brandwatch doesn’t share any pricing info about their social media management solution on their website. For more details about their custom pricing, you’ll need to book a meeting.

Buffer offers integration with all the main social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. On the other hand, MeetEdgar works only with Facebook (pages and groups), Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. 

Unlike Buffer, MeetEdgar also doesn’t offer robust analytics or reporting. It does send a weekly performance report. However, it’s very basic and shows you only how many posts you’ve published (and from which categories), changes in your followers, and clicks.

An area where MeetEdgar does excel, though, is content creation. It will automatically repurpose and republish evergreen updates, helping you to create an infinite content library.

Here are some of MeetEdgar’s key features:

• Suggested social posts will create variations for each update automatically
• A/B test variations to see which content works best with which audience members
• A limitless library where you can keep your content for when you run out of posts
• A single dashboard for managing social media accounts
• Real-time performance metrics

Supported Channels: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile

Pricing: MeetEdgar offers only two subscription plans. The Eddie Annual Plan is about $24.91 per month and includes five social accounts. The Edgar Annual Plan costs about $41.58 per month for 25 social accounts. Monthly billing is also an option. 

Buffer vs Hootsuite

There’s no denying that Buffer and Hootsuite are two of the most popular platforms for social media marketing. While they’re both solid solutions that integrate with all the main social media platforms, a comparison between Buffer and Hootsuite shows that they approach certain tasks, like post scheduling, differently which will also ultimately play a deciding factor in which tool will be the best solution for your needs. Basically, Hootsuite tries to substitute your social media accounts, while Buffer is more concerned with creating a queue of posts. 

Both tools choose to split some of its functionality across different apps. For example, to take advantage of social listening, you’ll need to sign up for the Hootsuite Insights app. 

One key difference, though, is the pricing. While both offer a free plan, depending on your needs, Buffer can work out cheaper (it’s also a bit more user-friendly making it more suitable for beginners).

Here are some of Hootsuite’s key features:

• A single dashboard with one calendar view for a quick overview of scheduled and published content 
• A Bulk Composer for scheduling multiple posts at once 
• An easy-to-use approval process for more effective teamwork 
• A unified inbox displaying all your incoming messages across your social accounts

Supported Channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok

Pricing: Hootsuite offers a free plan, three subscription plans and custom pricing for enterprise clients. The Professional plan is $99 per month and includes one user and 10 social accounts. The Team plan costs $249 per month for three users and 20 social accounts. The Business plan costs $739 per month for five users and 35 social accounts. All these prices are based on annual billing.

Where Buffer allows you to store thousands of scheduled posts in your queue, Crowdfire caps scheduled posts per account to less than a 1,000 (and that’s with their top-tier plan — the cheaper plans limit it to only 100). Buffer also offers more in terms of integrations. In addition to Crowdfire’s supported networks, you also get access to TikTok, YouTube, and Google Business profiles. 

Depending on your needs, though, Crowdfire might work out cheaper than Buffer. While their entry-level plan offers great value for money, the jump between one plan to the next is quite steep.

Here are some of Crowdfire’s key features:

• A good selection of analytics that include social analytics, post analytics, and competitor analysis
• Image and article recommendations to help with topic planning
• Automatic best-time-to-post recommendations for each account

Supported Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest

Pricing: Crowdfire offers a free plan and three subscription plans. The Plus plan costs about $7.48 per month for five linked accounts. The Premium plan costs about $37.48 per month for 10 linked accounts. The VIP plan costs about $74.98 per month for 25 linked accounts. All these prices are based on annual billing.